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“HE BROUGHT OUT AN OBJECT UPON WHICH SHE GAZED 

WITH CURIOSITY.” 


{See page 20.) 


BONY AND BAN 


The Story of a Printing Venture 


BY y 

MARY HARTWELL CATHERWOOD 
• % 

AUTHOR OF 

“ THE ROMANCE OF DOLLARD,” “ ROCKY 
FORK,” “THE DOGBERRY BUNCH,” 

ETC., ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


BOSTON 
LOTHROP PUBLISHING 



2n'] ; 

1898 . 


TWO COPIES RECEIVED 

0^6 IS'?' 





Copyright^ i8g8^ 

BY 

Lothrop Publishing Company. 


dolontal ^resH: 

Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co. 
Boston, U. S. A. 


CONTENTS. 


BONY AND BAN. 

CHAPTER 

I. Brother and Sister 

« 

II. Bony Has Adventures . 

III. The Man in the Yard 


THE ASSISTANT . 







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■ i ' ii 




BONY AND BAN. 


CHAPTER I. 

BROTHER AND SISTER. 

A DOZEN years ago, Granville might have 
been called the village of churches and schools 
and beautiful seclusion. It has a railroad now, 
but the railroad runs at its feet in the valley 
below. The town is on a terrace so downy 
and lovely that the bare ribs of Quarry Hill 
make it none the less attractive. From its 
main street the student ascends the Hill of 
Science to what is known as Denison Univer- 
sity. At the eastern and western ends are 
Young Ladies’ Seminaries, that yearly swarm 
with girls from various States, who brighten 
the half dozen stores on shopping Saturdays, 
and for constitutionals climb Sugar Loaf’s cone, 


7 


8 


BONY AND BAN 


towards the sunset, or pant up Mt. Parnassus’s 
huge shoulder on the east. Or, by favor, they 
extend their walk, in processions, with a teacher 
at the head, to that relic of the mound-builders, 
a mile on the Newark road. Alligator Hill, 
where a gravel-colored reptile stands distinctly 
up from summer greenness. Or they pass the 
valley southward and climb Flower-pot, where 
arbutus may be found in spring. I do not know 
positively of another spot in Ohio where arbu- 
tus grows. Perhaps it sprung there in compli- 
ment to this Massachusetts colony, who settled 
among the gentle hills, and built log churches 
until they could afford the many structures 
which now occupy prominent places. 

All the farms around Granville are rich and 
fair to look at. The air is much purer there 
than you find it southward, about the foggy 
flats. The old colonist families have beautiful 
homes and a great respect for culture. They 
go abroad, and have noted people to visit them. 
They keep the Sabbath zealously; base things 
do not flourish there. They are proud of their 
village ; and in the whole county a certain de- 


BONY AND BAN. 


9 


gree of deference is accorded to a Granville 
dweller; he must smack of learning when he 
lives in such a sea of it ; he hears all the gradu- 
ating exercises, and is invited to college con- 
certs; what are advantages in the great world, 
compared to these? A blessing long ago fell 
upon the place. I can see the sloping corn 
fields surrounding it, and the afternoon sun, 
lying like a benediction on the glistening build- 
ings. It has a stimulating atmosphere. The 
plainest and poorest man finds means to give his 
children an education, and the washerwoman’s 
daughter reads her graduating essay with equal 
honors beside the governor’s. Yet no fair spot 
can be without blemishes; and every home in 
Granville was not a lovely nursery of children 
growing up to honor the State. 

On an early summer afternoon two ladies 
were passing by an old house in that part of 
the village which sloped towards the valley. One 
of them was a resident, the other a schoolmate, 
married and settled on the Pacific coast, but 
returned for a brief visit. Together they had 
been looking at all the old landmarks, regret- 


10 


BONY AND BAN. 


ting that private fences were venturing up the 
slope of Sugar Loaf, and talking of the merry 
girls of their long-dispersed class. 

“ What became of Lucy Allbright, who mar- 
ried Tom Lemon just after we graduated ” 
inquired the visitor. 

“ Oh ! didn’t you know she died years ago } ” 

“ So she did ! I heard it, but it’s hard to be- 
lieve such things. She was such a nice girl.” 

“ There are her children,” said the resident, 
lowering her voice as she nodded to a boy and ^ 
girl talking across the fence. The boy stood 
outside ; the girl, a year or two his senior, sat 
upon the flat fence-top sidewise, leaning to- 
wards him. Their motherless, neglected condi- 
tion was too apparent. 

“ Lucy’s children,” murmured the other lady. 

“ Where is their father ? ” 

“ Nobody knows. She made a dreadful match, 
poor girl.” 

“ But everybody used to prophesy great things 
of Tom Lemon. He was so talented. He was 
studying law, when I went away, and intending 
to seek larger fields.” 


BONY AND BAN 


1 1 

“ Tom turned out very badly. He drank 
until he ruined himself, and then deserted her 
before the second child was born. She died 
in a little while. That’s the story that came 
back to us. They lived West. The children 
were sent to Cornelius Allbright.” 

“ Is he kind to them } ” 

“ He’s very queer. But he will not allow any 
one to interfere with him. The boy has been 
put out to work at a boarding-house, but the 
girl stays alone with her uncle. I have often 
thought it must be an unpleasant life the child 
leads with that bachelor. He has not been 
quite himself for a good many years. But he 
has means, and can take care of the children.” 

The ladies’ voices turned a corner, scarcely 
heeded by Bony and Ban. Bony was bare- 
footed, and wore a straw hat and very shabby 
trousers and jacket. His unbleached shirt was 
soiled at the cuffs. He had large, living hazel 
eyes, and a forehead white and high and bulg- 
ing so at the top that his rings of hair hung 
like bushes over an inward-slanting cliff. Ban 
was very black-eyed, very brown and warm- 


BONY AND BAN 


colored. She looked a little like a pomegran- 
ate, for she wore a yellow calico dress. 

“ I’ll be along about dusk,” said Bony, con- 
cluding their conversation. 

“ I’ll go, if uncle ’Nelus’ll let me,” said Ban. 

“You’ll find me up by Bancroft’s corner,” 
said Bony. 

“Yes; when the town clock’s going on seven,” 
said Ban. 

So Bony trotted along on his errand, and 
Ban dismounted from the fence and went into 
the house. 

Uncle ’Nelus always resented the sight of 
Bony. Had he been present, this conference 
between brother and sister must have taken 
place over the back-yard fence, or around the 
corner. The house interior was very formal 
and depressing. A house that is not repaired, 
and has no addition made to its furnishing in 
three generations, is apt to be so. Uncle ’Ne- 
lus had neither housekeeper nor servant. He 
and Ban picnicked there ; Mrs. Morris, a 
motherly Welshwoman, did their washing, and 
uncle ’Nelus caring nothing about his linen, 


BONY AND BAN 


13 


the little girl ironed it, with indifferent success. 
Neighboring mothers tried to be kind to her; 
but their interference was strictly discouraged. 
They claimed that ’Nelus Allbright had little 
but bread and cheese in his cupboard ; yet Ban 
had grown to be thirteen on this diet, and, 
though she was small, she was not a meagre 
child. 

There were echoing rooms up-stairs and echo- 
ing rooms down-stairs. Yet the house was not 
lonesome on summer afternoons, with carpen- 
ter sounds outdoors, the voices of children in 
the air, and the breathing of the wind along 
the valley ; as it was on short winter days, which 
all tended to gloomy nights, when the windows 
shook, and everybody else was housed close. 
Ban went to school fitfully; there were days 
during which uncle ’Nelus would not spare 
her from the house at all ; he sat at home with 
pains in his limbs, and required much nursing. 
She always prepared his dinner at noon. When 
he was in good health he walked the streets, 
leaning on a heavy stick, or sat silently at the 
largest grocer’s, watching with a stern eye every 


14 


BONY AND BAN. 


purchase that was made. Ban’s progress at 
school was curbed by the refusal of her uncle 
to buy books for her. Such ancient works as 
were in the house she might make use of; but 
entreaties brought no others. 

The uneven floor in the living-room creaked 
under Ban’s feet as she trod. The ends of some 
boards made bumps in the carpet, while at other 
places the foot sunk, betrayed into grooves. The 
homespun carpet, made by Ban’s grandmother, 
smelled musty. On rainy days discolored spots 
came on all the ceilings, and would grow thick 
in the cellar. 

This being a clear and sunshiny day, the air 
came across roses to Ban’s nostrils, as she pinned 
her sewing to her knee and stitched in the liv- 
ing-room. There was a high black mantel be- 
hind her, and bare walls about her. Ban was 
an old little woman who made her own clothing, 
and patched for Bony as much as she could. 
Neighboring mothers tried to give her instruc- 
tions, but it need hardly be said she was a funny 
figure. Uncle ’Nelus objected to buying any- 
thing but calico dresses for her, and these at 


BONY AND BAN 


15 


rare intervals. In summer her wrap was a lace 
cape, which had belonged to her mother; in 
winter a black wadded cloak, bleached gray by 
many rains, had been her defence against cold 
ever since she could remember. It made Ban’s 
head spin to see other girls of her age blossom 
so frequently into new clothes. 

Dreary as her experience was, she felt sure 
if Bony could only live with her she would be 
a happy girl. Uncle ’Nelus never met Bony 
without raising up the staff he carried as if 
about to strike him. Bony always looked him 
in the eyes without flinching. After every such 
encounter the boy shook his head at the thought 
of Ban’s remaining with her uncle, though the 
latter never lifted his staff at Ban. She re- 
sembled her mother, while Bony was growing 
more and more like his father. 

When the town clock struck five. Ban put 
down her sewing, and went into the kitchen 
to set out the supper. She took from the 
kitchen cupboard some cold rice and a plate 
of melted butter, and set them on the dining- 
room table. Besides the table, in this room, 


1 6 BONY AND BAN 

there were some chairs, which she kept set 
straight against the wall, and a mahogany-cased 
clock on a shelf. The wall-paper was peeling 
in places, and an enormous square of bare lath 
showed in the ceiling. Ban’s own room was 
over this apartment, and she often heard bits 
of plaster fall in the night, especially after rain. 

There was no tea to make. Nor did they 
take milk of the milkman. She pumped a 
pitcher full of water, and went into the weedy 
garden for radishes. These tubers came up 
huge and pithy, but she washed, and sliced 
them upon a plate. There was a grape-vine 
over one side of the house; the grapes were 
not yet ripe, and, when ripe, half of them were 
burrowed by worms. 

Uncle ’Nelus came into the house, groping 
slowly with his stick. His neck appeared to 
grow cut of his breast, so stooped was he. 
He was cold even in summer days, and wore 
a black woollen shawl around his shoulders, 
unless the weather oppressed him. A general 
grayness and sourness made his face a painful 
sight. He put his hat and shawl upon a nail. 


BONY AND BAN. 


17 


and sat down at the table before Ban called 
him. She was picking a handful of prairie- 
roses, intending to put them in a cup on the 
table, but gathered them in the skirt of her 
dress when she saw uncle ’Nelus at table. 

Sitting opposite him, with the roses in her 
lap, she waited until he drank his water and 
munched his bread and rice before asking: 

“ May I go up Science Hill this evening, 
uncle ’’ 

“ What’s there ? ” inquired uncle ’Nelus. His 
voice was always a growl. 

“ I want to take a walk.” 

“ Don’t you walk enough, going to school 
and back } ” 

“ It’s such a nice evening, I would like to 
go up on Science Hill.” 

“ Girls have no business to gad,” said uncle 
’Nelus. “ They better stay home and sew.” 

“ I have sewed. I got my new apron most 
made. It’s out o’ mother’s old lawn dress.” 

“ Last night it was Parnassus,” munched 
uncle ’Nelus, with his radish, “and now it’s 
Science Hill.” 


1 8 BONY AND BAN 

“ The Lower Sem girls were on Parnassus, 
last evening. Some of them looked so pretty. 
I sat off a good piece and watched them. 
How much they must know! O uncle I how 
I wish I could go to the Sem some day ! ” 

Uncle ’Nelus growled, as if the pains were 
coming back in his legs. He said girls learned 
folly enough, without going where such a price 
was paid for it. He also said it was a wonder 
her food did not choke her; people should eat 
in silence. 

Ban promised to eat in silence if she might 
go on Science Hill, and her uncle gave his 
negative consent by remarking if she failed to 
be indoors at nine o’clock she would be locked 
out. 

With more delightful anticipations than many 
children bring to great festivities, the little girl 
swallowed her rice and bread, and cleared the 
supper away. 

Uncle ’Nelus walked aimlessly around the 
yard with his arms behind him. Now he 
stooped and examined this spot and now that. 
A neighbor, who passed by and gave him good- 


BONY AND BAN. 


19 


evening without getting any answer, said to the 
next neighbor, who sat outside in the pleasant 
evening air: 

“ 'Nelus Allbright gets queerer every day. I 
wouldn’t be surprised if his mind entirely broke 
down.” 

The next neighbor replied that he had always 
been queer, but his sister’s death affected him 
more than anything else. The only change 
the next neighbor saw in him was his increas- 
ing miserliness. 

Ban, without the dignity of the lace cape 
and the openwork straw hat lined with pink 
paper, worn by her mother before her, topped 
only by her ancient Shaker bonnet, scudded 
off to Bancroft’s corner when Sugar Loaf was 
throwing the town into shadow. Bony was. 
waiting. It is probable uncle ’Nelus knew he 
was waiting, though he would not hear the 
boy’s name mentioned. They walked sedately 
until the ascent began, when they tugged up 
the steep path like sturdy ponies. Bony pulling 
Ban. Students passed them who were prob- 
ably marvels of learning, and they crossed the 


20 


BONY AND BAN. 


stile and the College Campus with a feeling 
of awe. 

“ Why did you hide it away up here ? ” whis- 
pered Ban, mysteriously, as they approached the 
College Cemetery, a fair, wooded spot where 
homeless students and professors were buried. 

“ I didn’t know where to put it,” said Bony, 
“ and this is the last place anybody would look.” 

The afterglow of sunset threw a transparent 
green shadow around them ; even the college 
pile and its attendant buildings were hidden by 
the woods. Bony made a turn around an oak- 
tree with a cavity in its side. He looked im- 
pressively at Ban. Then he plunged his arms 
in, and brought out an object, upon which she 
gazed with curiosity. 

“ What is it. Bony ? ” 

“ It’s a little printing-press. When I learn to 
set type fast I can print anything I please.” 

“Where did you get it?'' 

“ I swapped for it ! ” 

Blanche looked her brother over; he was not 
a boy with superfluities for swapping. 

“ I got it of young Munson,” he explained. 


BONY AND BAN 


21 


“ His father gave it to him for a birthday 
present. But he rather have my father’s big 
law-book.” 

“ O Bony ! did you trade that off } ” 

“Yes,” owned Bony, rather shamefaced. 

“ It was worth lots more than your baby 
printin’-press.” Ban viewed it as a precious 
bit of wreck, cast up with them from that 
half-remembered ship of home that foundered 
so early. When uncle ’Nelus sent Bony out 
of the house, he took the book among his 
clothes; Ban considered it his heirloom. 

“ But what could I do with the old book ? ” 
urged the boy in defence. 

“You could have kept it to learn, when you 
are bigger.” 

“ I ain’t a lawyer, and I don’t want to be one. 
Now, I can do something with the press. I can 
be a printer right off. I can make programmes. 
When the College and the Seminaries give en- 
tertainments they send to Newark to get their 
printin’ done. Why can’t I do it } ” 

Ban unclosed her lips and tilted her head one 
side, to consider this little barefooted speculator. 


22 


BONY AND BAN. 


He was a dear brother; but how dared he un- 
dertake such mighty things ? “ Will they let 

you ? ” whispered Ban. 

‘■‘Well, I’ll see if they won’t. There isn’t any 
paper printed in this town, or any printin’- 
house. I’m ’leven years old, and in ten more 
I’ll be twenty-one. What’ll we come to, if I 
don’t make up my mind to do somethin’!” 

Ban felt the stir of a mind more daring than 
her own. She looked through the dim woods, 
and said with a sigh: 

“ O Bony I I wish father would come back.” 

Bony dropped his head. Uncle ’Nelus could 
not object to the mention of father more than 
Bony did. 

Ban hastened on to projects of her own. 

“ When we get big, let’s keep house and board 
the students.” 

Napoleon sniffed. “ ’Most everybody in town 
does that. I’ll learn how to print newspapers, 
and you can live at my house.” 

“ Sometime I might grow to be a teacher in 
one of the seminaries,” mused Ban, in beatitude, 
“and know everything; and walk out at the 


BONY AND BAN. 


23 


head of all the girls. Yesterday, there was a 
little, teenty girl walking among the grown-up 
ones ; how very smart she must be ! ” 

“ I wish I had some nice place to keep it,” 
said Bony. “ I hate to leave it here over one 
night.” 

“ There’s so many empty rooms at home,” 
said Ban. But of what use were they to a boy 
banished from the premises } 

They searched each other’s eyes, wherein 
leaved and dusky tree-boles were reflected. 
To take his press to the boarding-house where 
he was employed, would be taking it to its 
destruction. 

“ Mr. Mantonya’s old house on the side of 
Parnassus,” suggested Ban. “ I believe he’d 
let you keep it there.” 

“ Yes ! ” assented Bony. “ The boys won’t 
run through there. His blacksmith shop’s so 
near he can watch. Since they’ve moved into 
their new house they only use the lower part.” 

Bony covered up his property again, and the 
children came slowly out of the Campus woods. 
A purple dusk had settled in the valley. They 


24 


BONY AND BAN. 


sat down for awhile in the dewy hollow of 
Quarry Hill, prolonging their Saturday evening. 
The town clock’s huge face, staring from the 
Baptist church tower, confronted them, and its 
iron minute-hand pointed ten minutes of nine. 
When Ban saw this, she rose to fly down the 
heights. 

“O Bony! I’ll be locked out if we stop here 
at all! I know uncle ’Nelus is coming in from 
the barn, now, to ’tend to the door-fastenings ! ” 

They took hold of hands and let themselves 
down-hill in a cautious trot. Bony accompanied 
Ban near the home fence. They exchanged a 
good-night kiss. He scudded towards his em- 
ployer’s, and she slipped in at the side door 
while uncle ’Nelus was locking the kitchen. 

“ I’m here,” called Ban. 

“ Get to bed, get to bed,” the old uncle 
muttered. 

The little girl ran towards the stairs, but 
came back, feeling an unusually strong impulse. 
She had often tried the feat before, most un- 
successfully. Uncle ’Nelus came through the 
sitting-room, shorn of his shawl and coat, a 


BONY AND BAN 


25 


gray-bearded, fearful-looking figure. But Ban 
stood on tiptoe and puckered her lips invitingly 
at his elbow. 

“ Good-night, uncle.” 

“ Get to bed,” said uncle ’Nelus. He did 
lean over and allow her lips to graze his ear. 

“ I must give you another, from Bony,” said 
Ban, thus encouraged. 

But her terrible uncle ’Nelus, instead of sub- 
mitting his ear to another from Bony, took her 
ear between his thumb and finger, led her to 
the foot gf the stairway, and dismissed her with 
a tweak. ^ 

Ban looked out of her own curtainless win- 
dow while unhooking her dress. Her heart 
was swelled and crowded into her throat. After 
unhooking her dress, she squeezed her throat to 
push the lump down. After this she laughed. 
Uncle ’Nelus was a very funny man. If father 
had never gone off would he have acted like 
uncle ’Nelus } 

“ Come back, father ! ” Ban exclaimed. “ Oh ! 
do come back to your children ! ” 

When the uproarious family in which he was 


26 


BONY AND BAN 


a drudge, retired, very near the beginning of 
Sunday, Bony lay awake, thinking. The air 
was feverish, and his roommates, sons of the 
house, of various sizes, tired by their day of 
hard play, snored in various keys around him. 
Young Munson had shown him how to set the 
types and operate his press ; and he was going 
over the process in his mind. 

In Granville, people who attended neither 
church nor Sunday school were in a small 
minority. It was no day of rest at this board- 
ing-house, but about half-past eleven o’clock 
Bony could be spared, and he made himself 
clean, and put on his “ other ” trousers and little 
linen coat, and walked forth, sweet and whole- 
some, though his bare feet would make no noise 
on the church matting. Bony liked to go to 
Sunday school ; he felt in good society. He 
liked the gentlemanly presence of his teacher. 
His teacher was a college junior, destined to 
be a theological student afterwards. After the 
noon Sunday school, this young gentleman was 
hurrying off to his luncheon, — people in Gran- 
ville took a Sunday luncheon at one o’clock. 


BONY AND BAN 


27 


and dinner at five, to brace them for the even- 
ing service, — when he noticed the boy trying 
to keep pace with him. 

“ Going my way. Bony ? ” he inquired, kindly. 

“ No, sir ! I just came up to ask when the 
Calliopes are going to give their next entertain- 
ment, — or the Franks, either.” 

“ You aren’t partial to one society, then ? ” 

“ I like them both. But if I was in college 
I’d be a Calliope.” 

“ Thanks ! So would I.” 

“ Are you president now ? ” 

“ Only chaplain. Why do you want to know 
about entertainments ? ” 

“ I want,” said Bony, seriously, “ to get a 
chance to do your printin’.” 

“ Printing ? ” 

“ I want to print your programmes for you. 
I b’lieve I can do it cheaper and as good as 
they do in Newark. Then I’m always handy, 
in a hurry, you know.” 

“That’s enterprise,” said Mr. Junior, without 
smiling. “ What do you print with — your 
fingers ? ” 


28 


BONY AND BAN 


“ I’ve bought a little press. If you’ll just give 
me something of yours to set up, I’ll show you 
how I do it.” 

“Well,” said his teacher, slowly, there is no 
public entertainment immediately pending, in 
either society.” Bony admired such sonorous 
English, but he felt anxious. “ We have open 
society, as usual, next Thursday evening. I tell 
you what we can do. Here is a poem of mine 
which you may print as a specimen. I’ll show 
your specimen in the business meeting, and the 
society will decide upon it.” 

Mr. Mantonya’s old house, on the side of 
Parnassus, stood just above his new one ; and a 
few apple-trees stood just above it, sticking 
their boughs higher than the eaves. Parnassus 
was as abrupt in ascent as an elephant’s sides. 
The lower floor of the old house was used as 
a family storeroom. In the east upper room. 
Ban joined Bony on Wednesday evening. It 
had taken him a couple of evenings to negotiate 
with the blacksmith for these secluded quarters, 
and carry his press down from the Campus hoi- 


BONY AND BAN. 


29 


low tree. A kerosene lamp, lent by Mrs. Man- 
tonya, shed light on his labors. They were both 
very quiet. The blacksmith had stipulated no 
strange boys should be attracted, to gallop over 
his premises. And typesetting was new and 
fascinating to Bony ; his eyes shone, and his 
white bumps stood prominent. It was a naked, 
dusty room. Ban sat on a barrel, munching 
some parched corn a girl had given her at 
school. There was a body and flavor to the 
sweet, brown-buttered kernels never to be found 
in more aristocratic pop-corn. It was stuff all 
out of fashion ; a relic of the State’s log-cabin 
days. Yet she who carried a pocketful of 
it to school smelled its incense with delight, 
and also the incense of popular favor for the 
time. Ban had not dared to offer Bony 

his equal share while he worked with his 
sleeves up. She piled it on a paper ready 

for him, and tried not to crackle her own 
grains loudly. 

When at last the typesetting was done, 

and Napoleon paused. Ban called his atten- 

tion to the corn, and took occasion to inquire 


30 


BONY AND BAN 


why he had his shirt-sleeves rolled above his 
elbows. 

“ ’Cause,” said Bony, munching, “ I’ve seen 
pictures of Benjamin Franklin when he was a 
printer, and he had his shirt-sleeves rolled up.” 

“ Are you a printer } ” 

“ Going to be one.” 

“ But Benjamin Franklin had long curly hair, 
too.” 

“ I don’t mind about the hair, but I want my 
hands to look like business.” 

“ Is the printing done now. Bony ? ” 

“ No. It’s just ready to do. “ I’ve got my 
copy set up.” 

“ What’s copy ? ” 

“ The thing you are going to print. This is 
my teacher’s poetry.” 

It was, in fact, a fragment of a poem, which 
the Junior, who enjoyed the reputation of poet 
of his class, intended to immerse in an effort of 
bolder metre. 

“ Could you read it to me } ” inquired Ban, 
with Granvillian respect for art. 

Bony straightened himself, and' read: 


BONY AND BAN. 


3 


“ A small green fist beneath the mold 
Lay passive through the winter weather : 

Nothing was clasped within its hold. 

— The heat came down and made it bold: 

Its knuckles pushed out altogether. 

“ The small green fist lay on the mold, 

Though underneath a dead leaf’s cover : 

Its blood was stirred and upward rolled — 

Slowly the fist and palm unfold 
To feel more leaves about it hover. 

“ Stand off, dead leaf ! the waving ferns 
Now spread their hands in constant blessing: 

They shake off sun and dew by turns : 

On them the summer never burns. 

) 

But green, and daintily caressing, 

“ Their touch my heated pulses calms 
And silent sermons to me preaches : 

They are our Mother Earth’s fine palms 
All fragrant with her hidden balms. 

Which to her children she upreaches.” 

“Well, that’s toler’ble pretty,” remarked Ban, 
impressed by Bony’s reading. “ Ferns are 
awful sweet ! ” 


32 


BONY AND BAN. 


“ I got in all the punctuation marks, I know,” 
said Bony, laying down the copy and lifting his 
ink-roller. “ Banny, I tell you what I’ve made 
up my mind to do.” 

Blanche listened for the revelation. 

“ I’m going to print a little newspaper.” 

“ Oh, no ! ” said Blanche, “you can’t.” 

“ Oh, yes, I can ! I’m going to make it,” said 
Bony, laying down his roller and taking a square 
off his thin stack of printing-paper, “ the size of 
this : four pages ; one page full of advertise- 
ments. And have it ready on Saturday morn- 
ings when the Seminary girls go shopping. I’ll 
print talk about people in it, and everybody will 
want to buy it. A cent a copy.” 

“ O Bony ! ” breathed Ban, whose view of 
this undertaking was from the ridiculous side, 
“you’re too little. Folks will laugh. Why, I’d 
laugh ! And it would make me mad to hear 
any one make fun ! ” 

“ Let ’em make fun,” said Bony, with a serious 
and visionary countenance. “ I can’t stop from 
trying things ’cause I’ll be laughed at. I’ve 
picked out some things to put in my paper. 


BONY AND BAN 


33 


And set some items down. I guess they call’m 
items. There’s never been a paper printed in 
Granville. We need one,” observed Bony, 
sagely. 

He inked his types and printed off his first 
proof. His forehead seemed to tie itself into 
a small bow-knot above his nose. 

“ How it looks ! ” he cried, scornfully. 

Some of the letters stood on their heads; 
some words galloped right into others, and the 
whole was blurred. 

“ I’ll have to fix it,” observed Bony, sturdily. 
So he inked himself high up his hands in the 
effort, and after awhile was ready to take off an- 
other proof. The printing was right, but the 
proof showed a mere blur. He inked his types 
heavily, and took off a black mass. 

“ O Bony ! ” exclaimed his sister. 

The little fellow stood silent. 

He tried again and again. It seemed impos- 
sible to get a clean, sharply printed page. 

“ I don’t b’lieve this type’s worth anything ! ” 

“O Bony!” 

“ Or I don’t understand how to use it.” 


34 


BONY AND BAN. 


“ What’ll you do ? ” inquired Ban, after a 
dreadful pause. 

Where was his little newspaper now ? Where 
the programme printing — or even the specimen 
poem he was to show the very next evening ? 

“ I’m goin’ to Newark — to-night,” said Bony. 

This was a more desperate leap than planning 
a newspaper. Ban very nearly breathed in a 
grain of corn, in her gasp. 

“ I wanted to take the Granville printin’ from 
their offices, and I don’t know whether they’ll 
show me or not. But I’ll see. I’ve got to find 
out how the thing is done before to-morrow.” 

“How long will you stay.f^” pleaded Ban. 
This expedition was as terrible in her eyes as a 
pirate’s cruise upon the high seas. But who 
could stop Bony ? 

He looked up, with the perspiration beading 
upon his forehead. 

“Oh! I’m not going to be a fizzle. I’ll have 
to be back in time to make the breakfast fire. 
About half-past five o’clock.” 

“ But the ’bus don’t go till morning.” 

“What do I want of a ’bus! I’m goin* to 


BONY AND BAN. 


35 


walk it. It’s only seven miles. They’ll be at 
work on the morning paper by the time I get 
there. That’s what I want to see.” 

“ Oh ! how’ll you get back } ” 

“Same way. Foot it. So I’m back by morn- 
ing they won’t care down at the boarding-house. 
Their young ones are always out playing ’round 
till midnight.” 

The children looked at each other, realizing 
how light were the family cords which bound 
them to* any spot. Nobody would care where 
Bony was, if he appeared in time to be useful. 

“ Well,” said Ban, “ I’ll go with you.” 

“ No, Miss Posey. I’ll have to run lots of the 
way. And you couldn’t go all over a printin’- 
house at midnight. I wouldn’t allow you to ! ” 
said Bony, protectingly. 

“ H’m ! you’re younger than I am,” exclaimed 
Ban. “ And you’ll go off in the dark and get 
hurt ! Besides I’ve forgot the time, and it must 
be after nine o’clock now, and uncle ’Nelus’ll 
punish me, and I might as well do something 
big to be punished for.” 

“ This jaunt wouldn’t do for you,” said Bony, 


36 


BONY AND BAN. 


solemnly. “You can’t go.” When Ban found 
her pleas were in vain, she refused to let him 
waste time in going home with her. 

“ I can run as fast as you ! ” she whispered, 
looking towards that dark curve where the broad 
main street swept around the hill-foot eastward. 

“ Not another word,” said Bony. “ I don’t 
want you to get into trouble ; if I do I can 
stand it.” And so he cantered off into the 
night. 


CHAPTER II. 


BONY HAS ADVENTURES. 

Willow Pond disappeared behind Bony. Al- 
ligator Hill was at his left hand, its clay rep- 
tile discernible ; then he left it in the rear. He 
ran in a long lope for perhaps half a mile further. 
Then he slacked to a quick walk ; his small bare 
feet, with their toes towards Newark, making their 
mark in the cool dust. Dust with sunshine 
sifted through it is different in feeling from 
dust half chilled with dew. Bony passed gates 
of ornamental stone which gave entrance to 
villas set back on rolling slopes. He passed 
farmhouses, and dogs came out to bark at him, 
and he shied stones at them as he hurried on. 
Sometimes the road cleft through hills, and 
once it descended to Jarrett’s Branch, which, 
rolling up his trousers, he carefully waded. It 
dug its way around the waist of a hill, and in 
this curve Bony came very near being run over 

37 


38 BONY AND BAN. 

by a party of young men, who were lashing their 
horses around it at great speed. 

Every little while he took a run ; then walked 
with long steps until he recovered his breath, 
and ran again. The miles decreased. He saw 
the glare of Newark’s gas, away off in the 
east ; cottages multiplied, bakeries and groceries 
sprang up. He was walking in what seemed a 
long village street, and it led him past a Cath- 
olic church, past residences growing closer and 
more pretentious, until one more turn brought 
him past the market-house and in sight of the 
court-house square. 

Near the canal, in the end of a five-story 
block, and in the third and fourth rows of win- 
dows, blazed the lights of the newspaper which 
Bony was seeking. He could see men busy 
setting types. 

A long dark gap with stairs rising from the 
very sidewalk gave entrance to the building. 
He plunged boldly up, his heart beating great 
thuds. On the next floor, where a jet of gas il- 
luminated a narrow passage, he found a painted 
hand on the wall, indicating that he should 


BONY AND BAN. 


39 


double on his course and mount another flight 
of steps. Neither stairs nor floor were clean. 
His naked toes recoiled from apple-cores and 
cigar-stumps. A hum greeted him before he 
reached the next floor ; when his eyes rose to a 
level with it, he saw only a long passage like 
the one below, lighted by a jet or two. But 
on the first door at the top of the staircase 
was a large yellow placard with “ Editor’s 
Room ” printed in swollen letters upon it. Bony 
thought the way to reach the information he 
wanted must be througTi the editor’s room. 

He knocked on a panel of the door, but 
nobody appeared to notice it. In fact, the 
presses overhead were making a great noise. 
Presently an inky, barearmed man, with a hand- 
ful of paper, came down from the upper floor 
and almost ran upon Bony. This man stared 
at him, and went in, shutting the door behind 
him. Almost instantly a young man came leap- 
ing up the lower stairs, humming a tune. He, 
too, opened the door of the editor’s room and 
went straight in. 

“ Maybe they don’t knock,” thought the boy. 


40 


BONY AND BAN. 


So he turned the knob for himself and walked 
into the first of a series of rooms. Nobody was 
there, but he heard voices, and followed them. 

In the next room several gentlemen were talk- 
ing ; the young man who ran up-stairs was 
already down at a desk, scribbling with all his 
might, and the printer who brought copy was 
waiting for what he wrote. 

Bony was such a little creature on silent feet 
that they did not notice him. He pulled off his 
straw hat. A clock showed him that it was now 
eleven ; he had no time to stand around and 
tremble. 

“ Mister ! ” said he, quaveringly, addressing 
the whole collection of men. 

“ Something of that sort, with a tincture of 
sarcasm,” the head editor was saying, when this 
treble smote his ear. He turned his bald head 
and spectacles, as they all turned, and seeing 
Bony, said, sharply: 

“ Eh } what do you want } ” 

“ Mother been whipped } ” “ Runaway 1 ” 

“ Police news } ” cheerfully inquired the sub- 
editors. 


BONY AND BAN. 


41 


The boy looked from one to another, and 
went straight to his errand. 

“ I want to learn to print.” 

“ Oh, you do,” said the chief editor, not un- 
kindly. “Well, run home and go to bed now. 
You can learn how to print when you are older.” 

“ But I ran all the way here,” remonstrated 
Bony, “ and I don’t want to run back till I see 
how it’s done.” 

“ Where do you live ? ” inquired the waiting 
printer. 

“ In Granville. You see, I promised my 
teacher I’d print off his piece for him by 
Thursday, and the type blurs all the time ; and 
I just can’t go to sleep till I know how to do 
the thing right.” 

Bony’s head felt light, as if it had lost part 
of its weight in water, and his words seemed to 
bob about and pop out of his mouth without his 
control. 

“ Doing job-printing, are you } ” inquired the 
young man at the desk, looking up, but writing 
ahead without a pause. 

“ I want to do it. But I do’ know whether 


42 


BONY AND BAN 


you’d feel like showin’ me, when you find out 
the job is one that always has been sent to 
you ! ” 

Those who were not too busy laughed. Bony 
felt that he had spoken with salad honesty. But 
his dark eye lighted up with more fire. 

“Well, my son,” said the chief editor, “we are 
very busy. Run away now, and come some 
day to our foreman there, and he may take you 
in hand and see if he can make a printer of 
you.” 

But the inky man, having got his copy, in 
turning to leave the room, said to Bony, “You 
come along with me.” And Bony trudged up- 
stairs at his heels. 

As they walked the length of the upper hall 
together, the foreman asked : 

“ How did you get over from Granville ? ” 

“ Walked.” 

“ Walked } — to-night ? ” 

“ Yes, sir, and I’ve got to get back in time to 
build the mornin’ fire, — that’s why I’m in such a 
hurry about the printin’.” 

“ Did you ever set type } ” 


BONY AND BAN 


43 


“Yes, I set type all the fore part of the 
evenin’.” 

The printer took him into an immense room. 
It was so broad, and long, and high, and so full 
of roar and strange machines, which seemed to 
open and shut their mouths, that it quite thrilled 
Bony’s soul. 

“ Look around,” said the foreman, hastening 
to his particular duties. “ But don’t get into 
any trouble.” 

Bony understood that he must say and do 
nothing to interrupt the business going forward. 
He walked along and looked at the typesetters, 
and some of them laughed at and chaffed him. 
Still, with his hands in his small trousers 
pockets, he walked along, devouring their work 
with his eyes, until he came to the printing- 
presses. They were steam-presses, attended by 
men hardly less quick and methodical than their 
own action. Reeking sheets rose up, printed 
all over one side, and placed themselves in the 
hands of a man who laid them out smooth. 
This was a fine sight to see. Bony stooped 
and looked over, under, and around them ; they 


44 


BONY AND BAN. 


were automatic giants beside his novelty toy. 
He thought competition with such powers would 
be like competition with thunder and lightning. 
But he soon learned the job-printing was done 
on other presses. 

The foreman touched Bony’s shoulder, and 
shouted in his ear: 

“ Come on. I’m going to do a little job-print- 
ing now, and can show you what you want to 
know.” 

He took Bony to a large hand-press, — a 
chrysalis left by the growth of the printing- 
office, — and Bony stood by and saw him strike 
off sheet after sheet of a large advertisement. 
This press operated on the same principle as 
his own. He watched how the ink-rollers were 
applied. 

“ What made my types blot, d’ye suppose ? ” 
shouted the boy. He showed a specimen of his 
spoiled job. The foreman, glancing it over, 
told him it was the way he had inked ; and 
let him apply the ink for practice. His lesson 
lasted more than an hour. It was after one 
o’clock before the rush in the printing-room 


BONY AND BAN. 


45 


began to subside. Some of the printers left 
while Bony lingered to take one-quarter of an 
hour’s instruction in typesetting. His mind 
was at a high pitch of wakefulness and interest. 
He was a sound and healthy sleeper by nature, 
but the joy of overcoming difficulties, and acquir- 
ing exact knowledge, made him during this 
night’s experience more than a little brown- 
eyed boy. He was a vigorous young mind, too 
thoroughly roused to think of rest. He prob- 
ably learned, with swiftness and exactness, more 
in that short time than a listless boy would 
learn in lounging over a printing-case for 
months. 

“ I must go back ! ” Bony cried, with a start, 
when the clock pointed to twenty minutes of 
two. 

“ Ain’t you tired ? ” asked the foreman. 

“No, I ain’t tired,” said the boy, his eyes 
shining. “ I guess you are, though. You’ve 
been real good to show me so much. I’m 
obliged.” 

Ignoring his thanks, the foreman inquired if 
he did not want some of the white paper scraps 


46 


BONY AND BAN. 


among the waste. They would be swept out 
otherwise. * Bony gladly made a flat package 
of some good pieces, and fastened it inside 
his jacket. 

“ You better come down to my house, and 
stay till daylight,” said the foreman. “ You don’t 
want to prowl along the road at this hour.” 

“ I’d love to do it,” said Bony, “but I’ve a very 
particular engagement, as early as daylight, in 
the morning. I can slip along.” 

“ Looks like it was overcast outdoors,” said 
the foreman. “ Take care of yourself, young 
man, and come back and see us again.” 

Bony offered his hand to be shaken by the 
foreman. 

“ I will come over again,” he promised. “ I’d 
foot it the whole way again to thank you for 
your kindness.” 

As he was running down-stairs, the young 
man whose entrance into the editor’s room he 
had noticed, hailed him and went down with 
him. 

“Whither away in this special rush. Young 
Enterprise \ ” 


BOATY AND BAN. 


47 


“ Home, sir/’ 

“ And you came from Grainville ? ” 

“Yes, sir. I had to.” 

“ What’s your name } ” 

“ Napoleon Lemon.” 

“I thought so, — Napoleon, I mean. There 
were no Alps, eh } ” 

“ I don’t know what you mean, sir.” 

“Well,” said the pleasant young journalist, 
“ I’ve a book here which fell to my share for 
reviewing, and I am going to give it to you. 
It’s ‘ Abbott’s Life of Napoleon.’ When you 
read that you’ll know what I mean.” 

“You don’t intend for me to keep it!” ex- 
claimed Bony. 

“ Certainly I do. I was just such a little 
fellow as you once. Slept in the shavings 
many a night. Sold papers. Had to work 
along the best way I could. You’ve been out 
all night, and yet your eyes are as bright as 
stars. You’re determined to succeed, are you?” 

“ Yes — sir! ” 

“ Well, go ahead. I want to see you again. 
You’ll take care of yourself, I know.” 


48 


BONY AND BAN. 


The journalist turned hastily down the street, 
and Bony, after giving him good-night, cantered 
in the opposite direction. 

He squeezed the book against his bosom. 
It was like a loving human companion to him 
in the dark. For the moon was nowhere to be 
seen. The wind seemed muffled in blackness, 
as it blew and pushed him like solid substance. 
The street - lamps made small oases of light 
around themselves, but were soon left behind, 
and with them he left also the last inquisitive- 
looking policeman, and skurried in the middle 
of the road between locked and silent homes. 

The dark, instead of growing lighter to his 
accustomed eyes, thickened and enveloped him, 
so that when he held his straw hat in front of 
him it made but an imaginary blur against the 
dense background. It was going to storm. 
The thunder was still distant, but lightning 
was reflected among the hills. 

Bony’s feet wandered into curves from the 
road. He groped, with one hand before him, 
and several times came plump against the fence. 
The last landmark he recognized was the deep 


BONY AND BAN. 


49 


cut around the side of the hill. From there he 
hugged the earth - wall all the way, and was 
guided by the sound of the water. There was 
a railing on the outside of the road, but he 
preferred to feel the hill -wall. No vehicles 
passed him. Dismal sounds came from field or 
wood, like some vivid flash on the background 
of silence. And then the thunder sounded 
nearer; and by the time he reached Jarrett’s 
Branch the tramp of rain was behind him. 
Bony waded through the water, feeling a prac- 
tical satisfaction in passing it before it could 
be swollen by rain. He thought of crawfish 
nipping his toes, to help him impetuously 
through. 

After going on, as he believed, he came again 
to Jarrett’s Branch, and was utterly lost in the 
vast dark. The rain began to pelt, but it be- 
came a steady pour, instead of a thunder-storm. 
So he had scarcely a flash of lightning to help 
him. 

Bony put his book inside his shirt-bosom as 
the safest place, and pulled his straw hat firmly 
on his head for an umbrella. Then, turning his 


50 


BONY AND BAN. 


face directly opposite the Branch, groped and 
groped, stretching both arms forward. After a 
long time his feet suddenly descended, and he 
sprawled across a narrow drain. Creeping up 
the opposite side, he came against a fence, his 
hands full of mud and his shoulders dripping 
with the storm. He held to the fence, and 
listened to a deep breathing on the other side. 
Then a cow coughed. And believing he had 
reached a barn lot, the boy climbed the fence, 
resolving to find the shelter of the stable until 
it grew lighter. He moved against something 
soft, which immediately gave a startled heave 
and the clatter of a bell The cows seemed 
huddled together to let the summer rain run 
off them, and, guided by their sighing and their 
cud-chewing, he made a half circle around them, 
and felt his way slowly ahead with bare toes. 
His caution brought him to another fence, along 
which he moved until a yielding door in it re- 
vealed that it was not a close-boarded enclosure, 
but the barn itself. 

Napoleon drew a relieved breath as this small 
door let him in. It was the stable. He could 


BONY AND BAN 


51 


have touched warm flanks as he passed the. 
stalls ; here a hoof stirred, and there a sleepy 
horse ground his hay. With hand straight 
ahead of him, the boy reached the main floor, 
and it took but a minute after that to hunt the 
fixed ladder, which gave ascent to the mow. 
How sweet and good the hay was! Rain beat 
upon the shingles, and caused him delightful 
shudders as he snuggled deeper and deeper, 
digging a hay burrow and scratching his hands 
with a point or sticky joint, until he was bedded 
in hay to his neck. He heard the horses breathe 
and stamp ; perhaps a rat gnawing in the gran- 
ary; or the uneasy stir and twit of baby swal- 
lows under the eaves. No seat in senate or 
assembly will ever give Napoleon the delight 
he found in that hay bed. And now he felt 
tired and drowsy. 

“ I must just take cat-naps,” he thought, “and 
be out at the first streak of light. I do’ know 
how far I got to go yet, except that it’s most 
all the way from Jarre tt’s Branch.” 

But this mental alarm-clock failed to act on 
a weary body. He fell into one of his sound, 


52 


BONY AND BAN 


solid sleeps, and woke to see daylight struggling 
through the cracks of the barn. He leaped 
straight up, the hay bounding like an elastic 
cushion with him. 

Bony tramped hurriedly towards the entrance 
of the mow, but another head rose in his way. 
It was a man’s head, and awake, and, seeing 
him, the man rose into a sitting posture. The 
hayseed spattered on his clothes did not de- 
tract from their fit and dignity. His eyes were 
large and dark, but their whites looked blood- 
shot. For an instant Bony took him to be the 
owner of the barn, laying in wait for uninvited 
little boys. 

His suspicions were confirmed by the man’s 
stretching out one hand to detain him as he 
tried to scud around him. 

“ What do you want, mister ? ” exclaimed 
Bony, divided by several apprehensions. He 
ought to be gone, for fear some one would 
reach Granville before he did. The weather 
had cleared. It was no longer raining, and he 
could make good time, for, steeped in hay, the 
warmth of his body had dried him ; he was sore 


BONY AND BAN 


53 


in some of his muscles, but vigorous and fresh. 

“ Whose boy are you ? ” inquired the man, 
huskily. 

“ Now he’s going to sue me for sleepin’ in 
his barn,” thought Bony. So he replied, with 
great caution, but respectful sturdiness: 

“ I’m my own boy. I guess it was after three 
o’clock when I crept in here, and I ain’t done 
any harm to the hay. It was the darkest night 
I ever saw. And I got lost ; and I run against 
this barn. Wouldn’t you come in out o’ the 
wet if you’d been me } ” 

“ Certainly. I did the same thing.” 

“ Ain’t you the owner of the barn then ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Well, what you keepin’ me from gettin’ past 
you for ? ” exclaimed Bony, knitting his brows. 
“ I ain’t got time to stay around here.” He 
rubbed the dried mud from his hands, and 
dusted his small trousers in resolute prepara- 
tion to descend the ladder. 

“ Do you live near here ? ” inquired the man. 

“ I live in Granville,” said Bony. 

The more he looked at the stranger the better 


54 


BONY AND BAN 


he liked him. There was nothing to be afraid 
of, except that the man might detain him talking. 
So he added : 

“ I got to be there by sunup, too.” 

“ Your mother will be worried about you.” 

“ No, she won’t,” said Bony. She’s dead 
this long while. But Ban might be.” 

“You said Ban,” continued the man, breaking 
bits of hay rapidly, so that they fell in dust on 
his knee. “ Ban who } ” 

“ Ban Sister,” said Bony, tramping towards the 
mow-entrance. 

“ One word more,” urged this queer compan- 
ion, leaning on one side so that he could stretch 
his arm across the boy’s way. “ What’s your 
name ? ” 

“Now he thinks he’s cute,” thought Bony. 
“ He wants to make some complaint about me. 
I good mind not to tell him ! ” 

“ What do you want to know my name for,, 
mister ? ” 

“You say you live in Granville, and have a 
sister Ban. Did you ever know any children 
there by the name of Lemon } ” 


BONY AND BAN. 


55 


“ Yes,” replied the boy, startled. 

“ Have they — how long? ” The stranger was 
large, fine and firm looking; but Bony noticed 
that he trembled and hesitated, and the dim day- 
light gave his face a pallid cast. “ Have they 
been dead long ? ” 

Thought the boy, “ Now, what crazy fellow’s 
this ! No,” he replied, “ they ain’t never been 
dead at all.” 

The man sat up straight and looked him 
keenly over. “You’re the boy, aren’t you?” 

“Yes, I am,” owned Bony, grudgingly. 
“ What difference does that make about any- 
thing?” 

The man clasped his hands together nervously 
several times, and took them apart again. 

“ Do you ever think -about your father ? ” 

The boy scowled. 

“ Not when I can help it,” he said, wagging 
his head. 

“ Why?” 

“ What do you know about my father ? ” 

“ Oh, I know all about him,” replied the 
stranger. “ He was a miserable wretch.” 


56 


BONY AND BAN 


“ You let him alone, will you ? ” said Bony, 
wagging his head with more force. 

“ Everybody knows what he was,” pursued the 
stranger. “ I don’t wonder you try to put him 
out of your mind. Does your sister try to forget 
him, too ? ” 

“You let my father alone, will ye?” repeated 
Bony, hotly. “ I’m a little feller, and I’ve got 
my sister to look after, and I’m doin’ the best I 
know how. But when I’ve grown as big as you 
are, if anybody gives me a word against my 
father, — no matter what he was, — I’ll handle 
whoever does it, now mind ye ! ” 

With this defiance. Bony skipped half over the 
man, who stretched himself on the hay, with his 
arms under his face. As the boy climbed back- 
ward, down the ladder, he observed that his 
queer mow-mate was shaking all over. 

“ Seems mighty tickled over nothin’,” mut- 
tered Bony. 

At last the boy rounded the eastern flank of 
Parnassus, and came, half jaded, with his long 
lope into the broad, familiar main street of Gran- 
ville. He clinched his book and printing-paper 


BONY AND BAN. 


57 


to his breast; neither had been soaked by the 
rain, and he had laid them beside him in the 
hay. With the other arm he kept up a swinging 
motion to help his feet propel him. The rising 
sun was at his back. There was no sign of 
stirring in the household where he belonged. 
He took advantage of this fact to put his print- 
ing-paper and book in the old house sanctum 
before going to his daily duties. 

The mistress of the boarding-house opened 
her front door and took a view of the weather. 
Then she called her boy of all work, and as he 
walked into the kitchen behind her, she neither 
knew, nor would she have cared, if she had 
known, that, instead of spending the night in 
health-giving sleep, he had accomplished a heavy 
task, laid on him by his own eager mind. 

When Bony returned from the butcher’s with 
the morning beefsteak, he paused a moment at 
Bancroft’s corner and whistled to Ban. 

Ban was around the corner, waiting for the 
signal, and while Bony thought of her as sound 
asleep in uncle ’Nelus’s closely locked house, she 


58 


BONY AND BAN, 


ran up and shook his hand affectionately. They 
had some original ways of greeting each other. 

“ Did you learn all about it, dear ? ” she in- 
quired. 

“ Pretty much what I wanted,” replied Bony. 
“ Soon’s I get off from my work I’m goin’ to 
make a decent copy of that poetry. And I’ll take 
you to the Calliope Society with me this evenin’. 
You must look nice,” said Bony. “You must 
do the dressin’ for both of us. Wear your open- 
work hat and that fine thing to put around you ’t 
used to belong to mother.” 

Ban’s sparkling countenance fell. 

“Bony,” she said, “uncle ’Nelus done last 
night as he always threatened. He locked me 
out.” 

Bony placed the beefsteak on the fence, and 
seemed to prepare himself for action. 

“ What did you do ? ” 

“ I went down to Mrs. Morris’s. She let me 
sleep there. Our house is all shut up, yet ; and 
uncle gets up so early. Do you s’pose he won’t 
let me come back ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Bony, aghast, looking 


BONY AND BAN. 


59 


at the grim house. “ But don’t you worry. I’ll 
have to begin to take care of you sooner, that’s 
all. Go back to Mrs. Morris’s, and if he don’t let 
you in to-day. I’ll try to manage. Can’t stop, 
now. This is the boarders’ breakfast.” He gath- 
ered the paper of beefsteak off the fence. “ I 
saw a man in a barn, this morning,” he added, 
struck by the recollection as an odd conceit 
which under the circumstances would amuse 
them, “ that wanted to know how long you and 
me had been dead ! ” 

“ Saw a man in a barn ! ” repeated Ban, paus- 
ing with her lips apart. 

“Yes. When it rained I crept in there out 
of the shower. And he seemed to have done 
the same thing. But he was dressed up. I 
don’t see why he tramped along there in the 
dark. He was determined to ask all the ques- 
tions about us he could ! ” 

“ Bony, which way had he come } ” 

“ I do’ know ; and I don’t care which way he 
goes.” 

“ Bony,” continued Ban, impressively, “ had he 
dark eyes, and was he a 1-a-rge man ? ” 


6o 


BONY AND BAN. 


“Yes,” replied Bony, indifferently, shifting the 
steak in his hands. 

“ And he inquired all about us Bony, it was 
father ! ” 

Her brother widened his eyes and sniffed at 
the suggestion. 

“ Ho ! I guess not.” 

“ Bony, it was father ! ” 

“ Why doesn’t he come and hunt us up, then, 
instead of creepin’ into barns and askin’ ques- 
tions ? ” 

“ He is coming. And maybe somebody told 
him that we were dead.” 

Bony turned over these suppositions in his 
mind with little favor. “ I wouldn’t say anything 
about this, if I’s you,” he counselled. “ Spe- 
cially don’t you say anything to uncle ’Nelus. 
I won’t ever,” said Bony, decidedly, “ let strange 
people make remarks about — father.” 

Ban promised, with a beatified countenance. 
She ran off towards Mrs. Morris’s, the eastern 
sun gilding her dark cheek ; and as she ran she 
kept whispering over and over : 

“Father, father, father, father.” 


CHAPTER III. 


THE MAN IN THE YARD. 

At eight o’clock of that evening Bony was 
waiting for Ban at the corner, and Ban was ap- 
proaching him, prinked in motley array. The 
Welsh laundress had helped her with the loan 
of a newer hat than the openworked, and a 
basque of spotted calico. 

“ I don’t look good,” said Ban to Bony, in 
distress. “ But uncle ’Nelus has kept the house 
shut all day. I went and knocked twice. So 
Mrs. Morris just borrowed these things for me. 
I feel awfuller than I ever did in my life ! ” 

“ It’s ’count of the hat,” observed Bony. 
“Couldn’t you turn it round the other way.?” 

Ban turned it. 

“ I think it looks worse,” said Bony. 

“ I’ll just go right back. Bony Lemon ! Look 
at the folks going along Main Street. The}' 
don’t go up to the College lookin’ like me."' 

Bony strongly demurred. His eyes stood out 

6i 


62 


BONY AND BAN. 


with earnestness. He told Ban that, while he 
wished she had her things, if it would make 
her feel better, for his part he considered her 
as ornamental a lady as any going up the hill 
that night. 

“You’re my lady, when I take you anywhere,” 
he explained. “ The invitations always say ‘ Mr. 
and lady.’ ” 

Thus consoled. Ban proceeded on the way 
with him. He showed her a perfect copy which 
he had taken of the verses. 

“ When I make my paper,” said this young 
brother, spatting his feet on the. sidewalk with 
energetic tread, “ I’ll get you a new openwork 
hat.” 

“ They don’t wear ’em now,” observed Ban. 

Bony did not linger on this point. 

“ And if uncle ’Nelus won’t let you in. I’ll 
provide for ye, somehow.” 

This was almost as heart-warming to Ban as 
being provided for already. 

A great many couples were going up the hill 
to open Society. Ban’s eyes devoured the ele- 
gance of the young ladies. Some were students 


BONY AND BAN 


63 


from the Seminaries. But the Granville girl 
proper was generally an exquisite creature, — 
the result of clear air, a healthy, stimulating life, 
and the keeping of the Puritan Sabbath. In 
most cases her father had distinguished himself, 
and her mother was a cultivated woman. The 
grace of home life clung to the Granville girl in 
the streets. The very air around her was sweet- 
ened as if by the scent of her home garden. 
Everybody exchanged greetings with everybody 
else. It was barely dusk, and one star hung like 
a huge, trembling drop of light just over Sugar 
Loaf. People who live in a refined village get 
the full benefit of neighborhood life, which 
people in large cities often miss. 

While both children were using all their 
breath to tug up hill. Ban fancied a future, in 
which Bony and herself would be like those 
nice young people, and father, returned to them, 
would be like the very nice fathers in Granville. 
She forgot her two kinds of calico. 

They entered the College building with other 
groups, and slipped up stairways and through 
halls. Bpny watched the open doors, hoping to 


64 


BONY AND BAN - 


see his teacher. Some of the rooms were hand- 
somely furnished. Others looked very bare. 
But almost all private doors were closed. They 
came, finally, to the suite of Society rooms, and 
were ushered in, and seated in chairs placed 
along the walls. 

Bony was so anxious to get his proof to the 
head of the room, where his teacher sat, that he 
touched the sleeve of a deputy-usher who seemed 
to have nothing to do, and asked if he would 
please take it up.^ 

The young gentleman had a white flower on 
his coat, and his hair shone with marvellous 
polish. He heard Bony’s whispered account of 
the copy, and ran it over with a critical eye 
himself. 

“ Hands. Hands grow out of the ground, 
eh } ” said this young gentleman, sneering, not 
unkindly, at that poetical extract. “ I wish 
gloves did. I’d box a dozen pairs or so.” He 
was glad to take the proof to its author, and 
have a chance to repeat his criticism. 

Ban thought she had never seen anything 
equal to this Society hall. It was rather nar- 


BONY AND BAN 


65 


row, but high, and mightily frescoed. The 
president sat on a platform in a chair of state, 
and the chief officers sat near him. There was 
a small table and a hammer with which to rap 
on it when the exercises needed regulating. 
Several pictures were on the walls, but she 
was certain the one standing at the end of the 
room had never been equalled. She had heard 
it was painted by a gentleman in a far-off city 
called Cincinnati, and that it represented the 
muse Calliope, for whom the Society was 
named. Calliope appeared a girlish blonde in 
airy robes ; the name Allegro would have suited 
her just as well, had she not held in one hand a 
scroll bearing in Greek her own motto, “ Truth, 
Excellence, Eloquence.” She abode, life size, 
in a heavy gilt frame, having gauze curtains 
to partially screen her; and Ban’s eye was not 
one to see any defect in the foreshortening of 
her advancing limb. 

All the triple rows of chairs were filled by 
visitors, leaving an aisle down the centre of the 
room, and down this aisle the gentlemen on the 
programme came, each in his turn, and planted 


66 


BONY AND BAN. 


himself for action- before the picture of Calliope. 
The salutatorian told the assembled company 
six times that they were welcome to the halls 
of Calliope ; then, finding he could not remem- 
ber the rest, drew his manuscript from his 
bosom and read it through. Bony’s teacher 
read his poem. Then there followed a warm 
discussion, and a number of grandly sounding 
orations. Every young man seemed to have 
formed his opinions for life, and to feel heated 
towards every other young man who differed 
with him. Latin was nothing to them ; and 
men who lived and died thousands of years 
ago seemed their most familiar acquaintances. 
Ban felt her ambitious desires greatly stirred. 
If father would only come back and send Bony 
to college, and she could see Bony standing in 
a swallow-tailed black coat, with bulging shirt- 
front and perfect tie, talking so elegantly, that 
was all life need to offer to her! 

But sitting alongside of her, scraping the 
floor with his bare toes, his eyes full of specu- 
lation, he was just good enough, after all! 

When the exercises were quite over, the 


BONY AND BAN, 


67 


Calliopes conducted their guests through the 
library which adjoined their hall. Bony and 
Ban kept at the heels of larger folks, Bony 
secretly anxious to get out of the building and 
take his sister home, that he might return 
and sit in the principal entrance door until 
the later business session of the Society was 
over, to wait for the decision about programme 
printing. But . Ban wished to linger at the 
heels of larger folks because she enjoyed that 
neighborhood. The expanses of bookshelves, 
the busts and pictures, delighted her eyes. She 
took swift notes of the most elegant girls, and 
gave secret twitches and adjustments to her 
own spotted calico basque, which was lapped 
a hand’s-length over its fastenings. 

But Bony finally moved her through the exit 
door and found their way down-stairs. 

The town clock boomed ten when they ran 
across the dewy Campus. 

“ If I was going home to uncle ’Nelus’s, I 
couldn’t get in now, anyway,” said Ban. 

“ Didn’t he open the door at all to-day 1 ” 
inquired Bony. 


68 


BONY AND BAN 


“ No. And I watched for him in the yard, 
but he didn’t come out. Do you suppose he’s 
gone off } ” exclaimed Ban, with sudden suspi- 
cion, as if going off were the besetting weak- 
ness of her guardians. 

“ Where’d he go to .5^” said Bony. “Uncle 
’Nelus don’t visit any folks. He hasn’t been 
even as far as Newark since I can remember.” 

Ban gazed down dubiously at the masses of 
shade the maples made in Granville streets. 

“ Bony Lemon, do you think anybody’d hurt 
poor old uncle ’Nelus.?” 

Bony scoffed at the idea. 

“ I never heard of anybody bein’ — hurt in 
Granville, did you .? ” ruminated Ban. 

Bony said the folks that robbed and killed 
were all in big cities. 

And Ban further reassured herself by mention- 
ing that there was not much in the house to steal. 

Yet this did not explain uncle ’Nelus’s queer 
seclusion. With one impulse they turned a 
corner out of their way to go past his house. 
The nearer they approached it the more rapidly 
they walked. 


BONY AND BAN 


69 


The night was clear and starry. In most of 
the houses the lights were out, for the village 
went to bed early. Here and there a piano 
tinkled, and through lace curtains Bony and 
Ban saw some families entertaining friends. 
Uncle ’Nelus’s near neighbors were having a 
good time, while his dingy house was shut in 
mystery around him. 

The children patted along until they quite 
reached his fence. Then Bony grasped his 
sister’s arm and held her back. 

“There’s a man in the yard,” he whispered. 

“ It is a man ! ” she confirmed, in a whisper 
lower than his. 

The man was standing in front of the house, 
and his back was towards them. He took a step 
forward, and hesitated. Then he moved around 
the side of the house and looked up at the win- 
dows. He took off his hat and leaned his face 
on his hand. 

Bony was stooping to peer between the boards 
of the fence. Ban was on her knees, crouched 
close to him. She very much desired to scream 
for the neighbors, but knowing that Bony would 


70 


BONY AND BAN 


not run, determined to stick close to him, what- 
ever the man did. 

Bony now breathed an exclamation which 
startled her so that she grasped the fence. 

“ Git out ! ” whispered Bony. “ It’s the man 
I saw in that barn!” 

“ O Bony Lemon 1 ” 

“’Tis — the very man that asked so many 
questions I Now, what does he want around 
uncle ’Nelus’s house.?” 

“ Maybe,” said Ban, her hands turning cold 
on the board, and her heart beating so that 
it shook her — “it’s — father — and he wants 
us!” 

Bony rolled his eyes aside at his sister. They 
showed large and liquid in the dim light, but 
their look combated her suspicion. 

Ban stood up, and, without knowing that she 
was going to do so, called softly : 

“ Father — father ? ” 

Her secret call, suppressed so long, had 
broken loose from her. 

“ What you doin’ ! ” exclaimed Bony, dragging 
at her calico skirt. 


BONY AND BAN. 


71 


But seeing that the man wheeled towards 
them and was coming, he stood up also, deter- 
mined not to appear cowardly. 

“ Who called me } ” said the man, stopping 
just at the fence. “Are you here, children 

“Yes, sir,” replied Ban, out of her great faith. 
“ Was you lookin’ for us } ” 

“ Bony and Blanche, is it } ” inquired the man. 

“ Yes, sir ! ” 

“ I was looking for you. I thought perhaps 
you were in the house.” 

He reached up and helped Ban over the 
fence, and, carrying her out of the shadow of 
the house, stopped and looked closely at her 
features. His elbow was twitched. Bony stood 
beside him. 

“ Say, mister ! ” said Bony, his voice shaking 
with agitation. 

“ It ain’t any mister, dear,” said Ban, being set 
down in the dewy grass. “ It’s our father.” 

“ You don’t know me, my son.” 

“ No, sir ! ” 

“ But I knew you in the barn, this morning, 
though I never saw you in your life before. 


72 


BONY AND BAN 


You look like the old picture of little Tom Lemon, 
when he used to run around these streets. And, 
though your uncle ’Nelus had told me both you 
children were dead, after seeing you I came back 
to inquire again.” 

“A-w!” exclaimed Ban. “Did uncle ’Nelus 
tell you that } ” 

“Yes. I drove over from the railway station 
last night, and came straight to this house. He 
told me that, and shut the door in my face. I 
started to walk to Newark.” 

“You felt awful bad,” said Ban, with ready 
perception. “ But when you came back to-day, 
didn’t other folks tell you different } ” 

“Yes. I have been waiting all day for some 
glimpse of you. I thought — perhaps you 
wouldn’t know me.” The pain in this admission 
moved Bony somewhat. 

Such other advances as his returned father 
might then have made to him were cut short 
by a noise within the house. They all heard 
it, though it was so indistinct that immediately 
afterwards they could not be sure. 

“ Uncle ’Nelus must be in there,” whispered 


BONY AND BAN. 


;3 

Ban, fearfully. “ The house was shut all day.” 
How terrible it was to think he may have been 
lying hurt within those musty doors, while the 
whole pleasant day, beginning and ending in 
dew, stuffed with bird-songs and cheerful life, 
had passed heedlessly over him ! 

“We must get into the house,” said their 
father, decidedly. 

“ But everything’s locked,” said Ban. 

Bony thought of the wooden-slatted window in 
the kitchen, and mentioned that these bars could 
be wrenched away. In moving around the house 
they heard that half-distinct noise again. 

The man’s hands broke away the wooden slats 
and pushed up the window. They also hoisted 
Bony up, and he crept into the kitchen. Then 
he groped for the door, unlocked and unbolted it, 
and let the others in. 

Ban fumbled for a candle end in every place 
where such a relic might be. But her father took 
matches from his pocket, and, lighting one, moved 
through the house with the children at his side. 
.The match lasted into the sitting-room. But 
nobody was there. He scraped another, and, 


74 


BONY AND BAN. 


holding its little flame up, they explored the 
mouldy front-house. Moving through the hall 
this light died out. He reached forward at the 
door to strike another, and stumbled upon a 
heap of something which groaned so suddenly 
that Ban uttered a scream. 

How long it seemed before that match turned 
from blue to yellow! before it outlined uncle 
’Nelus lying against the stairs 1 before it assured 
them there was no mark of violence about him ; 
but that he was helpless and conscious, and star- 
ing at them with awful eyes. 

Bony’s father thrust matches into his hand 
and bade him strike them. All three stooped by 
the old man, holding the yellow tremulous lights 
close to him. He moved his eyes from the chil- 
dren to the man accompanying them. 

“ Tom Lemon ! ” he whispered. “ Tom Lemon 
again I Where’s my cane } ” 

Uncle ’Nelus’s tongue was not paralyzed. He 
used it occasionally against the lonesome-looking 
man sitting by, whom so many of the neighbors 
had forgotten. 


BONY AND BAN. 


7S 


“ Will you go away, Tom Lemon ? ” he 
cried. 

“ Certainly, when you are better,” replied the 
children’s father. 

“ Why did you come back here } ” 

“To take care of my children. I am fit to 
undertake it now. I waited until I was. And 
I am able to do it well, and to return what you 
have spent on them.” 

“ You can’t return my sister^s life.” 

“ I know it. But I can try to make some little 
atonement to them and her and you.” 

Uncle ’Nelus dozed, and broke out again vin- 
dictively : “ The boy’s got your evil nature. 
He’ll go against you, too ! ” 

“ The boy,” said their father, “ defended me to 
a person he thought a stranger. He’s got enough 
of his mother in him to have some mercy on a 
prodigal father.” 

“Take them out of the house and go!” said 
’Nelus Allbright, fiercely. “ Take the girl, and 
leave me alone in my old age I ” 

“ I’ll never treat you so,” said their father. 

He rose up to bring the children into the 


76 


BONY AND BAN. 


room, and found them sitting on the floor, just 
outside. 

They came up to the bedside, one on each side 
of him. Ban crept closest to the old uncle, and 
arched her arm around his miserable head. 

“We do think a good deal of you, uncle 
’Nelus,” cooed Ban. “ Our father wouldn’t make 
us leave you alone in this big old house.” She 
kissed his cheek-bone. 

“ Don’t hurt me ! ” said uncle ’Nelus. 

“ I think Bony could do it carefuller than I 
do,” observed Ban. “ Can he try } ” 

“No,” said uncle ’Nelus, savagely. “Old 
broken man like me ! Who’d want to ! ” 

Bony was secretly of that opinion himself, but 
he stepped up and touched his lips very lightly 
to uncle ’Nelus’s cheek-bone. He thought it 
was silly to kiss men. But his heart was 
touched. And uncle ’Nelus did not resent the 
caress. 

“ You must get off to bed, now,” said Tom 
Lemon to his children, marshalling them towards 
the door. 


BONY AND BAN 


77 


Ban parted with her father, in some haste to 
fix Bony’s old room for him. She was therefore 
surprised to hear Bony patting down-stairs, and 
hurried after, to call him back. 

“ I got to go over there,” explained Bony, 
indicating his employer’s house, “and give notice 
for quits. I’ll be along bright and early in the 
morning.” 

“ And you’ll never go away again ! O Bony ! 
I’ve always said father would come back.” 

“Yes, he’s come,” admitted Bony. 

“ And ain’t he nice ! Ain’t his forehead white 
and tall ! ” 

“ I noticed his head,” admitted Bony. 

“ Oh, don’t you like him } ” 

“ I sort o’ do,” said Bony, heartily. “ I used to 
think I never would. But I’ve took a notion to 
him, already, so I think most as much of him as 
I do of you.” 

Later in the summer weather, uncle ’Nelus 
sat cushion-propped in the yard of pleasant 
evenings. All the neighbors noticed how his 
affliction had softened his face. Ban and Bony 


78 


BONY AND BAN. 


and their father were constantly with him. The 
house was being painted and repaired, and 
refurnished. A housekeeper looked after the 
family comfort. 

The children’s father had opened a law office 
in Newark, and drove back and forth every day. 
They went to school ; the Seminary looming 
in perspective before Ban, and the College before 
Bony. Never again did the openwork hat, the 
ancient mantilla, and faded cloak parade with 
Ban ; but the pretty dresses and delicate ways of 
Granville girls became hers. 

As for Bony, when he drove through Newark 
once, with his father, and pointed out the 
office where his midnight labors had been so 
eager, his father smiled and said, with twinkling 
eyes : 

“You shall have a hand in newspaper-mak- 
ing, my boy, when you are ready to choose your 
business. Whatever you want to do, you shall 
do.” 

The printing-press, departing from Mantonya’s 
old house, took up its permanent residence in 
Bony’s own room. And besides printing many 


BONY AND BAN. 


79 


a programme for its busy owner, it. once threw 
off several dozens of this card of invitation : 


Blanche and Napoleo^i Lemon present 
their compliments., desiring that you will 
be present on 

THURSDAY EVENING 
to assist in celebrating 
UNCLE ’NELUS^S BIRTHDAY. 




THE ASSISTANT 


A NEWSPAPER STORY 




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THE ASSISTANT. 


“Are you the editor? ” inquired the old farmer, 
pausing inside the sanctum. 

“ No,” promptly replied India. “ I’m only the 
assistant. The editor has gone to the depot. 
Won’t you sit down ? ” 

She rose and placed a box for his seat. The 
only chair in the room was a revolving one, 
screwed to the floor beside the desk. 

The farmer had come through a saddler’s 
shop to mount to the ofiice. The publishing 
room was divided from this by a temporary 
partition of pine boards. He sat down with 
his hat on, and looked curiously around. Leav- 
ing his mud-spattered person out of consider- 
ation, it was a place of oddities and beginnings, 
rough plastered, and containing but two win- 
83 


84 


THE ASSISTANT. 


dows, which looked north over the black street, 
the rapidly springing wooden houses, the vanish- 
ing railroad and prairie. Some woodcuts were 
pasted on the wall. A fancy paper-weight was 
among the files on the desk. A bench, pushed 
out at the end, as if its occupant had just left it, 
stood before a table that depended, for one 
corner’s support, on a barrel. It was the ex- 
change barrel. 

The farmer, discountenancing extravagant lux- 
ury in his own home, rather approved of what 
he saw, and decidedly approved of the assistant. 
She might be either eighteen or twenty-five ; 
was brown, with clear, black eyes, and a knot 
of curly hair on top her head. She looked live, 
capable, and girlish ; able to break a span of 
mules, and sell them to advantage afterwards, 
yet delicate enough to. wear the yellow blossoms 
of the wild sensitive plant bunched in her hair 
and belt. 

“Well, I come to subscribe for the paper,” 
said the farmer, after she had addressed several 
envelopes, talking to him about the weather as 
she did so. 


THE ASSISTANT 85 

“ My brother will be glad to have your name,” 
said the assistant. “ How shall I write it ? ” 

“ Isr’el Bonebrake’s my name,” said the farmer, 
going deep into his trousers and bringing up a 
ragged pocketbook, which, being • opened, dis- 
closed green banks of wealth. “ What’s the 
amount ? ” 

“ One dollar a year, fifty cents for six months, 
or twenty-five cents for three months, payable 
in advance.” 

“You don’t ask enough,” remarked Mr. Bone- 
brake, . coming forward to lay down his dollar. 
“ Two dollars is the figger for county papers. 
You folks has started up with the town. You 
must make it pay.” 

“ Oh, we shall,” replied the assistant, con- 
fidently. “ My brothers will advance the price 
as they improve the paper.” 

“ How many air ther’ of you ? ” 

“ My two brothers and myself. One attends 
to the publishing and advertising ; the other 
edits. I assist. We’ve heard of you, Mr. Bone- 
brake, — you own some stock-farms about here } ” 

“ Yes,” replied the farmer, nonchalantly. “ I 


86 


THE ASSISTANT. 


got a couple ’o thousand acres or so west o’ the 
place. The place is growin’, isn’t it ” 

“ Wonderfully. I think it’s bound to be a 
grain and stock centre.” 

“Now you talk!” said the farmer, with enthu- 
siasm. “ Why, when I came here, twenty year 
ago, ’twan’t nothing but perrara, far as the eye 
could see. We’ve planted hedges, and groves 
has growed up. And six months ago, the two 
railroads struck us and crossed, and here’s the 
town ! I killed rattlesnakes where Powell’s put- 
tin’ up his ellyvator. We’ll be a city.” 

“ It’s only a question of time,” said the girl. 

This pleased Mr. Bonebrake so that he re- 
peated several times it wasnt nothin’ but a 
question of time. 

“ So you young folks come on here, and 
started a paper. Had you ever run a paper 
before .? ” 

“ My brothers are practical printers. I have 
learned to do a great many things.” 

“ I bet you have,” said the farmer, with ap- 
proval. “ I like smart wimmen. Some folks 
doesn’t ; but I do.” 


THE ASSISTANT. 


87 


“ Oh, I just help my brothers. If the paper 
succeeds, you must credit it to them. In the 
course of a year they hope to get a large press, 
and keep the hand-presses only for jobbing. 
They will have to be very close and careful, but 
if they make a good paper I know the people 
will stand by them.” 

“ They will that ! ” said Mr. Bonebrake. 
“ They won’t lose nothin’ for startin’ when the 
town’s so young.” 

Steps on the saddler’s stairs now brought a 
young fellow into the room, who threw his hat 
with a slam at the table, and cried out : 

“ I never saw such an abominable place as 
this is!” 

The assistant gave him a swift, salutary 
glance. 

“ Mr. Bonebrake,” she said, “ this is the editor, 
Mr. Pink Bradshaw. One of our new sub- 
scribers, Pink. My brother has not brought 
his editorial office up to his notions yet, Mr. 
Bonebrake. He’s ambitious. He would like 
to receive his patrons in something like a pal- 
ace-car, you know.” 


88 


THE ASSISTANT. 


The farmer advanced his hearty hand and 
shook the young man’s. 

“Well, I declare,” said he, “you don’t look 
nothin’ but a boy ! ” 

The young fellow laughed. 

Isn’t your other brother no older } ” inquired 
Mr. Bonebrake of the assistant. 

“ Younger.” 

“We try to make up in pluck what we lack 
in years,” said Pink. “ But — ” 

“ But we’re open to suggestions from old res- 
idents,” said the assistant. 

“Well, I sejest ‘keep on,’” said Mr. Bone- 
brake. “ J ust you keep ahead.” 

They took him through the publishing de- 
partment, where he saw, Jo Bradshaw and 
another printer setting type, the hand-presses, 
the ink-pads and stack of printing-paper. He 
expressed local pride in the establishment, and 
shook hands with the entire force before going 
away. 

“ Now, if you’ll come to my place,” he said, 
in the door, “ I’ll show you my kind of machin- 
ery: wind-pumps, and stawk-sheds, and tilin’.” 


THE ASSISTANT. 


89 


“ My brother has been thinking of visiting 
your farm and some other prominent stock- 
men,” said the assistant, “ to get an article about 
your methods. It might be useful.” 

“ All right ; come ahead ! Well kill a chicken 
and give you a bite to eat.” 

The farmer went smiling down-stairs, and 
the editor’s assistant fixed her clear eyes on 
her brother. 

“ I don’t care ! ” he said, sitting down at his 
table and striking it with his hand. “ You 
can fix it up with the old mossbacks first-rate, 
but this is a corner of the earth I cannot 
endure.” 

“ So you thought you could tread on his local 
pride and not get hurt in return } ” 

“ I didn’t see him when I first came in. The 
mud! Just look at the mud sticking to my 
feet ! ” 

He showed the black, waxy soil. He was a 
sensitive-looking, delicate-faced young fellow, 
fair, blue-eyed, yet with much reserve force ap- 
parent about him. 

“ The wind rasps my very soul I ” 


90 


THE ASSISTANT 


“ Did you gather any items ? ” inquired the 
assistant, calmly, having drawn a leaf forward 
and taken up her pencil to make a local of Mr. 
Bonebrake’s visit. 

“Yes, my dear, I did. There’s a man just 
got off the north train to prospect this place 
for the purpose of starting another paper. He 
has money. I talked with him, or he talked 
to me. He goes right to the point.” 

“That’s what made the mud, and the wind, 
and the place so unendurable,” said India. 
“ Well, let him start it.” 

“ And run us out in two months ! ” 

“ He won’t run us out.” 

India rose up and approached her brother. 
Her face was lambent, as if she were the spirit 
of fire. 

“ Pink Bradshaw, didn’t we make up our 
minds to locate here, and take all the conse- 
quences ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Am I not your older sister ? ” 

“ Yes.” ' 

“Didn’t I educate myself and manage to get 


THE ASSISTANT. 


91 


you boys places, and give you something of a 
chance for yourselves ? ” 

“ Yes, my dear, you did.” 

“ Did you ever know me to fail in anything 
I undertook ? ” 

“ Never.” 

She rested one hand on his shoulder and 
tipped up his face to meet her eyes. 

“ I have pledged myself, my health, my life, 
my brains, to the success of you two boys. 
Pink, I would lay my right hand down to be 
cut off at the wrist, if that would secure success 
to you. But, instead of that, I can only give the 
labor of that hand. Any woman who honors 
her men-folks, and pushes their fortunes, honors 
and glorifies herself. My darling boy, if you 
and Jo don’t make men that I can be proud of, 
you will ruin my life and drown it in shame.” 

The young man’s sensitive face kindled from 
hers. 

“ I wasn’t whining ! ” he exclaimed, as if 
spurred. “ But a man can see impossibilities 
where a woman can’t.” 

“ Thank heaven for a woman’s vision, then. 


92 


THE ASSISTANT. 


I don’t believe in impossibilities. I have done 
too many impossible things while people stood 
by to tell me I couldn’t. When I say I pledge 
my life, and brains, and might, to the doing of a 
thing, that thing will be done.” 

“ I know,” said Pink, with enthusiasm, “ you’re 
the bravest girl in the world.” 

• “Not at all. I’m a great baby who loves her 
brothers, and is afraid of snakes. But if I made 
up my mind'' said India, stretching her fisted 
arm before her, “ to take a rattler round the 
neck and strangle it to death, I should do it, if 
it covered my hand with bites, and killed me.” 

“ I believe you ! ” said Pink, with a start, as if 
his elbows had been electrified. “ Where’s my 
clip and pencil I must get to work. You’re a 
howler. Lady Macbeth.” 

“You’re a fine-strung poet, Johnny Keats. 
Haul the barrel and table over this way. I 
want to know everything you put in that first- 
page article.” 

They consulted together, India starting the 
theme. Pink produced decorated thoughts. She 
took out his adjectives and reduced his sen- 


THE ASSISTANT. 


93 


tences. Jo called for copy. India took it to 
him, and distributed locals before the other 
printer. 

“ Don’t you want to dress up your advertise- 
ments now, while I set type for you ? ” she said 
to her younger brother, who at once washed his 
hands, ran them through dark, curly hair like 
his sister’s, and took his ruddy face away to pore 
sturdily over her desk. 

This force was a regiment composed of offi- 
cers; the other printer was the foreman. He 
felt a vital interest in the paper’s prosperity. 
He clicked his type faster and with nicer exact- 
ness, vaguely propelled by the young woman 
working silently in the same room. This printer 
often told his wife, in a general way, that some 
women would make their men get on and work 
their level best, whether or no. 

India wanted Jo to learn how to express him- 
self in practical forms. He was careless, and his 
conversational English stained with double neg- 
atives and many abominations. He was raw in 
boyhood, yet gave better business promise than 
his brother. 


94 


THE ASSISTANT. 


When the sun hung just above the horizon, 
casting long shadows eastward, she went home, 
stopping at one of the wooden groceries for 
provisions. The whole town was composed of 
yellow-pine excrescences, from the first gigantic 
hotel, to the tiniest land-office. A number of 
people nodded to her, though she had yet no 
girl intimates. Men, untying, their teams to 
drive home across the prairie, gazed curiously 
at her. Though the paper was but a few 
months old, they knew the minutest details 
about it. 

As India approached her unfenced house on 
a path which cut across hummocks of wiry grass, 
she was looking forward, as the thrifty assistant- 
woman always does, to that time when the boys 
would run their firmly established paper alone, 
and she could devote herself to the residence, 
lined with pictures, glittering with silver, full of 
comforts, which would take the place of this 
three-room nest. The prairie did not bound her 
ambitions. 

“ But wherever one stands,” remarked India, 
opening the door, “ the centre of the earth is 


THE ASSISTANT. 


95 


always exactly beneath him, and the centre of 
the heavens exactly over his head.” 

There was a sitting-room, and a bedroom, and 
a kitchen supplemented by a tail of shed. The 
furnishing was scant, but homelike, eked out by 
the ornaments a quick-witted girl can make. In 
the bedroom she hung her sunbonnet on its 
nail. It was her room. The boys took turns 
sleeping in the office, the one who stayed at 
home camping on a folding-couch in the sitting- 
room. 

“ Well-nurtured girls in various cities,” said. 
India to herself, “are now sitting down to dinner, 
and talking about next month’s trip out of town. 
But the assistant on the Rolling City Chronicle 
must light a fire and get the boys’ supper, — not 
neglecting to darn those last two pairs of socks, 
while the people are gathering.” 

When everything was ready, she pinned a 
white cloth outside the window, and was busy 
with a sock drawn over one hand until the 
signal was obeyed. Then the three sat down, 
and India exerted herself as if the boys were 
desirable gentlemen acquaintances come to pay 


96 


THE ASSISTANT. 


court to her. Jo was always less a cub, and 
Pink more a poet, in India’s presence. 

She followed them back to the office about 
dusk. A rising sweetness was abroad, and the 
air so clear it cut out every object with sharp 
edges. The town herder was driving home the 
cows from their free pasture up the ridge. A 
freight-train, far off on the western road, trailed 
into sight, and puffs of smoke on the northern 
horizon denoted some approach along that line. 
The prairie was like a mountain plateau in 
giving one a sense of nearness to the sky. 
The hemisphere of many-shaded greens pressed 
sharply against the melting west. 

At the office India hurried to finish whatever 
was behind on the week’s issue, while the rest 
of the establishment set type. When the ten- 
o’clock passenger whizzed by, their week’s work 
was done. Jo and the foreman were already 
printing off the papers. The rumble of the 
presses followed India and Pink down-stairs. 

“ Climbing upward in the night,” she quoted, 
taking hold of his arm as they stumbled past 
stores where the kerosene lamps were being 


THE ASSISTANT. 


97 


put out “ I wonder if I shall turn out a mere 
monkey, agile in climbing? I’ve always been 
undertaking something. Pink, look at the con- 
stellations. Don’t they seem ready to prick us, — 
they are so near with their sharp points ? What 
a grand thing it is to accomplish in this world ! 
If we die to-night, our week’s work is well done : 
it’s always wise to be prepared for accidents.” 

“ But what does it amount to, when it is 
done ? ” sniffed Pink. “ That other man will 
run us out. I haven’t any head for practical 
matters, India.” 

“Your whimpering is passed over without 
notice. Did you ever think, — practical mat- 
ters are just like piano-keys : if you don’t touch 
them with knowledge, you make discords. We 
can’t have a piano for about four years yet. 
But when we get home. I’ll take down the 
banjo and plunk you a tune.” 

“ And if we succeed in making a paper here, 
what outlook does it give us?” 

“ Honor, influence, home. A seat in the Sen- 
ate for you or Jo, if you hit the popular need, 
and care for it. In time, a trip to Europe. All 


98 


THE ASSISTANT. 


the time, exchange of prods with other minds, 
and a chance to push what is good and punish 
what is mean. At summer resorts the well-nur- 
tured young lady may now be entering a grand 
hop; but I am going home with ink on my 
finger, and the assurance in my soul that in 
some vast future larger battles will be given 
me to fight, and I shall grow as victor.” 

Past midnight, however, the assistant saw 
her former victories crumble before her eyes. 
Pink’s shouting struck her through the ear like 
a dagger. She crossed a great change while 
leaping over the side of her bed. The office 
was on fire, but Jo was not in it, for Jo had 
waked Pink, and run off to others for help. 

India passed through a nightmare of throw- 
ing clothing on, finding everything inside out 
or upside down. She was running across the 
open prairie with her brother; the streets rang 
with cries of fire, and all the inhabitants of a 
town so slightly built turned out with terror. 

A crowd was already passing pails of water 
from hand to hand. There was not a hose or 


THE ASSISTANT. 


99 


a Babcock extinguisher within scores of miles. 
The harness-store had smaller buildings shoul- 
dering against it, which the owners were trying 
to save. A steady, roaring pillar of flarne stood 
up from the tinder structure, lighting the prairie 
for miles, showing the metallic glitter of steel 
rails, imperfect outlines of mill or elevator, turn- 
ing to black blisters the fronts of shops across 
the wide street, and reflecting itself in the eyes 
of a thousand men and women. 

It was too late to do anything but confine 
the fire, if possible, to the one crumbling block. 
There was at the time no wind, and the pails 
were made to do vigorous duty. In went the 
roof, sending up a constellation which put out 
half the stars. 

“ This is too bad, sis, ain’t it, now ? ” said a 
human voice, through the tumult, to India’s 
ears. Mr. Bonebrake, the stock - farmer, was 
there, his whip in hand, ready for driving 
home. 

“ I was settin’ up with hogs to ship to-night,” 
he shouted, “ and was one of the first to see the 
fire. It bu’st out all at once, full blaze.” 


lOO 


THE ASSISTANT 


“ I’m afraid you won’t get your paper to- 
morrow,” said India. 

“ Pshaw ! you’ll lose considerable, won’t you ? ” 
“ Burning up there is all that my brothers and 
I have, except a little cheap furniture. There 
goes what I have worked for since we were left 
alone in the world.” 

“ Pshaw ! No insurance ? ” 

“We were to insure the latter part of this 
week. -Every dollar was needed before. But 
I would like,” said the assistant, shaking her 
finger at the fire, “ to get the better of that ! ” 
“ Pshaw ! ” groaned Mr. Bonebrake, with full 
Western sympathy. 

“ My brothers,” said India, feeling her heart 
swell in proportion to the calamity, “ will take 
that old fire for a mere candle, though, to light 
them on the road. And I’ll help ! ” 

“ What’ll you do now ? ” 

“We’ll have to get presses, some way, and 
start the paper again.” 

“ Got any backers ? ” 

“ No.” 

“ Yes, you have,” said Mr. Bonebrake, rising 


THE ASSISTANT. 


lOI 


also to the occasion. He pushed through the 
crowd, abruptly, and got upon a high platform 
in front of one of the stores. In the midst of 
the roar of fire and human lungs, he began to 
shout a speech, saying he did not intend to do 
so, but pluck was pluck. He was burnt out 
once himself, and had a tornado tear him 
down another time. And these young people 
was bound to make it go ; they had the rattle- 
snake-killin’ grit into ’em, and who’d stand by 
to give them another start } He called the 
attention of the banker, and begged to say he 
had a couple of thousand acres of as good land 
as any man in the counties around, and them 
boys and that girl was to be stocked up for a 
fresh start, if it took every acre of it. He said 
he was excited, but he meant it. 

When people understood what he was talking 
about, they began to consult among themselves. 
The banker leaped upon the platform. He was 
a man of few words, but remarked that the 
Chronicle was an institution of the town, and 
for his part he would not have it destroyed; 
he would head a paper at the bank in the 


102 


THE ASSISTANT. 


morning. Mr. Bonebrake shouted to him to 
head it now; and the banker took out his note- 
book and did so, Israel Bonebrake adding his 
name and his hundreds with an eager hand. 
Somebody called out that a new man had come, 
well heeled to start another paper ; but the pop- 
ular voice replied : 

“ Throw him in the fire ! ” 

Other well-to-do citizens sprang upon the 
platform, and put their names and contribu- 
tions upon the paper. There was a crowd 
raging to contribute. The public-spirited en- 
thusiasm was so great that cheer after cheer 
for the Chronicle arose, while the fire which 
had destroyed its outward presence among them 
was sinking. The editor. Pink Bradshaw, was 
called upon for a speech, and lifted to the plat- 
form. He had but one boot on, but, brimming 
to the lips with such appreciation of his towns- 
people as made a maturer man of him, he spoke 
straight out of his poetic heart to the hearts 
bearing him up in calamity, and made what 
they pronounced a “ rattling good talk.” Then 
his brother was put up beside him; and Israel 





OTHER WELL-TO-DO CITIZENS SPRANG UPON THE PLATFORM 







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THE ASSISTANT 


103 


Bonebrake shouted for the sister, who, to avoid 
good - natured violence, slipped up behind the 
boys, put her hands on their shoulders, and 
looked from the background between their 
heads, — a trio of representative young Amer- 
icans. 

“ There they stand,” shouted Mr. Bonebrake, 
“ as peart and gritty as any bunch of yearlin’s I 
ever see, and here we’ll stand by them. They’ve 
got to have a good office and one o’ them big, 
fine printin’-presses. They’ll be a credit to this 
town, for these here boys are as full of go-ahead 
as a perrara-hen is of tricks. And their sister, 
she’ll always — ” 

Assist,” said India. 



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